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Ask Slashdot: Prioritizing Saleable Used Computer Books?

Posted by timothy on from the books-are-heavy-man dept.

g01d4 writes "I volunteer at a used bookstore that supports the local library. One of my tasks is to sort book donations. For > 5-year-old computer books the choices typically are to save it for sale (fifty cents soft cover, one dollar hardback), pack it, e.g. for another library's bookstore, put it on the free cart, or toss it in the recycle bin. I occasionally dumpster dive the recycle bin to 'rescue' books that I don't think should be pulped. Recently I found a copy of PostgresSQL Essential Reference (2002) and Programming Perl (1996). Would you have left them to RIP? Obviously we have very limited space, 20 shelf feet (storage + sale) for STEM. What criteria would you use when sorting these types of books?"

4 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. Re:By Year... by Darinbob · · Score: 5, Informative

    I don't know, Programming Perl would be more relevant to more people than anything written in the last couple of years.

  2. Re:By Year... by Anrego · · Score: 5, Informative

    That book is great and has aged really damn well. I still dig out my second edition copy from time to time. The "gory details" section is great when you are trying to figure out some obscure incantation that some sadistic bastard left as a present for you in a legacy script.

    I'd still recommend reading that book cover to cover to anyone that wants to learn perl. You won't be a guru, but you'll have a pretty solid foundation.

  3. Re:Let the market decide... by SQLGuru · · Score: 5, Informative

    Bookfinder.com is a quick and easy search that covers Amazon as well as several other used book sources. It's got an ISBN search so you can see how well a particular version is doing on the market. My wife and kids have used it to pick up college text books.

  4. Re:By Year... by mwvdlee · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'd add a bit of rough categorization here based on my own buying patterns.

    Applications (Office, Photoshop, etc) have a very short shelve life. Anything over a couple of years old is useless.
    Languages (Perl, PHP, Ruby); throw away after a decade or so. It differs though; old C books may still apply, old Java books less so.
    Theory (algorithms, methodologies); should be good for a long, long time.

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